You know what sucks? Pay inequality. Despite some debate, the unavoidable reality is that men are typically paid more than women for doing the exact same work. Former Channel [V] and The Circle host Yumi Stynes discovered that for herself after opening her male co-star’s payslip to discover he was being paid significantly more than she was for their job.
Speaking on WHO’s TV podcast, Binge List, to talk about the upcoming SBS documentary Is Australia Sexist?, Stynes explained that by complete accident while working for Channel [V] she got a gander at her male counterparts pay and was devastated to find the difference in numbers.
“Sometimes you could be thinking, is this all in my head? But other times it’s quite clear – like for instance I was given, by accident, my colleague’s pay packet.”
“It was addressed to me, so I opened it and then saw what he was getting paid, and I was doing the exact same work and he was getting paid a lot more.”
She told Binge List host, Clare Ridgen, that the revelation left her question the way the media industry treats women in general.
“It was really like a slap because I had been working my arse off to do a good job and to really try and be excellent,” she says, “And time and time again you’d get told, “Oh you’re doing this job because of the way you look, or they’re trying to fill some kind of diversity quota”, or some other way in which your worth is diminished, or measured by completely different standards to men.”
While Stynes down’t want to identify the man whose name was on the check, she did swear it wasn’t Osher Gunsbereg, “I’d rather not say – but it wasn’t him.”
